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Prof. Lorraine O’Driscoll secures prestigious research award

Congratulations to Prof. Lorraine O’Driscoll on being one of only 12 researchers nationally to successfully secure an IRC Advanced Laureate Award.

This IRC scheme was launched in 2018 to support exceptional researchers in conducting frontier basic (blue-sky) research that pushes the boundaries of our current knowledge.

Prof. O’Driscoll’s project (EVIC) will examine extracellular vesicles (EVs) — tiny particles that are released from cancer cells into the bloodstream. Her team will study how these particles can be used for the early diagnosis of cancer and as indicators of the optimum anti-cancer drugs for a patient. Their research has also shown that EVs from cancer cells may play a role in the spread of cancer throughout the body and in making cancer cells not respond to treatment. EVIC will investigate a new way of stopping, or at least limiting, this happening. But not all EVs are bad!  EVIC will also engineer EVs from safe healthy cells to help transport drugs directly to cancer cells, so as to be of benefit at lowest possible doses with fewest side-effects.

More details: https://www.tcd.ie/news_events/articles/six-trinity-researchers-receive-irish-research-council-advanced-laureate-awards/